Shared Hosting versus.... ?

Over the past few weeks, Tony and some others have noted excessive load times for sites on GoDaddy. Mine's among those sites, which is why I care.

Anyhow, if the issue is shared hosting, what are the alternatives? I glanced at GoDaddy's dedicated hosting packages and they appear to start at $99/month. At that price my website needs to be achieving a lot more for me than it is currently. Thoughts?

asmallorange.com
Very user friendly and just a great product. I'd recommend them to anyone.

fluidhosting.com
Don't let the out of date site dissuade you. They are very, very good and I've been with them for many years. I have approx 20 sites on a shared plan and no problems at all (273 sites on the shared IP). Very responsive tech support.

mediatemple.net
Of the big dogs, far and away my favorite. I use them for clients' shared hosting via their "Grid" plan. I also use them for "ve Server". On a share that I am currently testing one of my sites on, there are only 16 other domains on the IP address. With their Grid share plan, you get a free domain as long as you're with them (last I checked).

rackspace.com
I've been with for a decade or so, but only use for a high-traffic Magento ecommerce client on a dedicated server.

I don't use, but have, and really like:

dreamhost.com
Used to have a client with multiple sites there. Liked them enough that I would use them again if I had the need.

hostgator.com
For the ultra budget-minded, there are usually a ton of promos out there for yearly plans.

When it comes to the "dollarAyearHostatron.net" type hosts, just dig to see who they really use for their infrastructure. They almost always track back to one of the large shared hosts, via reseller plans of Hostgator, etc. If that's the case, just use Hostgator. Why add a potentially fly-by-night's layer of [fingerquotes] customer service [/fingerquotes] to your tech support issues? It's really not worth saving a dollar a month on a $5/month plan to go with a...here comes a lawn industry term that never seems to get mentioned in this sub-forum, even though it often should...lowballer.

Anyhow, if the issue is shared hosting, what are the alternatives? I glanced at GoDaddy's dedicated hosting packages and they appear to start at $99/month. At that price my website needs to be achieving a lot more for me than it is currently. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

My apologies. I blazed passed your overarching point and jumped right into recommendations.

It's not an issue of shared hosting, it's an issue of bad hosting. GoDaddy has never been known for their hosting prowess. They do pan out to be one of those "X is their core business, not Y" companies. The problem is that they are a domain name company who could just as easily mismanage operating an amusement park as they could a data center. Since hosting is one of their huge revenue streams, you think they would be better at it, they're just not.

I have yet to see a single instance where an LCO needs to be on anything more than a good shared plan, even for those with Wordpress installs or back-end CRM functionality.

Thanks for the info, especially the list of possible alternatives. I've registered my domains and done my hosting and email with GoDaddy since probably 1998. While I've always known they're not the best, their phone support is what has kept me from looking around. I liken my tech knowledge to my Spanish language fluency: I know enough to order a meal, but I'm also just as likely to accidentally start a brawl that will end with me face down on the sidewalk bleeding and broken. So I appreciate the fact that they can usually help me out (I say usually because the last issue involved me sitting there while the kid looked for the answer on Google).

which one of these that you have suggested is good for wordpress? I've seen dreamhost recommended on wordpress, and mabee even hostgator.

i'm not very computer literate, will switching hosting companies effect SEO in anyway? i feel like made some pretty good ground for what i was trying to do by the spring, would hate to mess everything up, such as i did when i had to change my address.

asmallorange.com
Very user friendly and just a great product. I'd recommend them to anyone.

fluidhosting.com
Don't let the out of date site dissuade you. They are very, very good and I've been with them for many years. I have approx 20 sites on a shared plan and no problems at all (273 sites on the shared IP). Very responsive tech support.

mediatemple.net
Of the big dogs, far and away my favorite. I use them for clients' shared hosting via their "Grid" plan. I also use them for "ve Server". On a share that I am currently testing one of my sites on, there are only 16 other domains on the IP address. With their Grid share plan, you get a free domain as long as you're with them (last I checked).

rackspace.com
I've been with for a decade or so, but only use for a high-traffic Magento ecommerce client on a dedicated server.

I don't use, but have, and really like:

dreamhost.com
Used to have a client with multiple sites there. Liked them enough that I would use them again if I had the need.

hostgator.com
For the ultra budget-minded, there are usually a ton of promos out there for yearly plans.

When it comes to the "dollarAyearHostatron.net" type hosts, just dig to see who they really use for their infrastructure. They almost always track back to one of the large shared hosts, via reseller plans of Hostgator, etc. If that's the case, just use Hostgator. Why add a potentially fly-by-night's layer of [fingerquotes] customer service [/fingerquotes] to your tech support issues? It's really not worth saving a dollar a month on a $5/month plan to go with a...here comes a lawn industry term that never seems to get mentioned in this sub-forum, even though it often should...lowballer.

VPS is a hybrid of shared and dedicated servers. You have the complete software/server control of your own dedicated box (root access, insulation from other domains, etc), but it's just a lower cost slice of one.

which one of these that you have suggested is good for wordpress? I've seen dreamhost recommended on wordpress, and mabee even hostgator.

i'm not very computer literate, will switching hosting companies effect SEO in anyway? i feel like made some pretty good ground for what i was trying to do by the spring, would hate to mess everything up, such as i did when i had to change my address.

Click to expand...

I used Dreamhost for WP and liked it, and currently am using MediaTemple and ASmallOrange for WP. I have a start-up that's entirely leveraging MediaTemple's WP, with two separate WP domains, so I have a strong wager placed on their service.

In terms of SEO, beyond making sure the server is in your country of focus and there is no real degradation in site load times, there are no big issues to worry about. You simply transfer your domain from one IP to the new. Until the DNS transfer syncs across the web, I'd keep your old site active for a couple of days. More care does need to be taken when you're changing the actual domain's name (ie, bobsmowing.com to mowtastic.com).

I've never heard of them, but that doesn't mean much. What I do see is they registered the domain in mid-2010, filed their LLC 9/2010, they're in Virginia, and their mailing address is a UPS Store (again, not indicative of much). The founder, per Linkdin, has a deep, formal technical education. Their Twitter, where they don't seem active, has a total of 6 Tweets, and 9 followers. Of those, the couple I checked don't seem to be clients. When Googling them, their footprint seems to be be very, very small (directory sites and affiliate-style articles). You have a reference, but unless I had strong references, I wouldn't personally add them to my watch list. To me it's a "go with the devil you know..." kind of deal.

The friend who recommended them is in IT (cyber security, govt contracts) and knows the owner through that community. Since you haven't heard anything negative I'll add them to the big chart of service plans and prices, and see what looks best at the end. In some realms small=good, but if that means support isn't great I'm not interested.